Born in New York City and one of Martha's Vineyard, MA's most famous residents, Carly Simon is a Singer Songwriter who hit it big in the 1970s with a string of pop/soul hits with a blues sensibility.

Simon's father Richard was co-founder of the Simon & Schuster publishing house. Her older sister Lucy is also a singer and musician, and the two of them started out performing together in the '60s as "The Simon Sisters" before Carly went solo. She was married to James Taylor for a number of years, and they had two kids, Sally and Ben, who are also musicians (who in fact got their start singing backup on Mom's 1987 album Coming Around Again); she's still close friends with James' brother Livingston.

By far Simon's most famous song is "You're So Vain", a bouncily sarcastic hit about an egotistical male friend with a penchant for homewrecking and globetrotting hedonism; speculation has been rampant for four decades about who it's about, but Simon has only publicly revealed three letters of the man's name: A, R, and E. She has told a few people, including TV exec Dick Ebersol and Howard Stern, but to everyone else, there has been a long list of speculated men, including Mick Jagger (who sang backup on the song), Warren Beatty,note Fair enough. guitar builder Daniel Armstrong, and record exec David Lawrence Geffen note Geffen has been openly gay for a very long time, but the rumor is that Simon was jealous of his professional favoritism towards his friend Joni Mitchell.. Simon has openly said it is not about her ex-husband James Taylor, but did once joke about it being about Deep Throat (aka W. Mark Felt). note She apparently got the idea for the apricot scarf from Nick Nolte, who has only two of the required letters — Nicholas Nolte.

Lyrical Dissonance: This is very close to being one of Simon's signature songwriting techniques; her very first hit, "That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be", is a song with seemingly happy lyrics about beating the bad relationship odds, but a mournful, extremely ambivalent tune that indicates the singer doesn't really expect to come out on top. "Anticipation" (written about a fling with Cat Stevens) has a distinctly triumphal tune but the words are about pre-first-date jitters. "Better Not Tell Her" sounds like an angry rant from a jealous ex, but it closes on a desperately sad and lonely note. "Jesse" is a deliriously happy song about wanting to see a man who is absolutely no good for her. "You Belong To Me" is a jazzy, sax-laden, almost seductive song about a woman who's terrified of losing her cheating lover. And then there's her cover of "Eensy-Weensy Spider", which serves as a reprise of the title track on Coming Around Again, which is a song about a frustrated housewife living her life in a fog... and it has her kids singing backup.

Survival Mantra: "I haven't got time for the pain/ I haven't got room for the pain/ I haven't the need for the pain/ not since I've known you". Played with, as the song isn't defiant at all — it's actually a mushy thank you note.

Take That: "You're So Vain", of course. Also "Better Not Tell Her", in a much more tragic vein.

Was on the receiving end of one from ex-husband James Taylor. She gave him an ultimatum: cut back on his recording and touring to spend more time with her and the kids, or their marriage is over. The title of Taylor's next album? Dad Loves His Work. They were divorced soon after.

Unstoppable Mailman: In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, the United States Post Office released a commercial featuring Simon's song "Let the River Run" that reassured the nation that, despite everything that had happened, the people of the United States could still count on them. It's actually pretty heartwarming.

Yandere: Played with in "You Belong To Me" and "Better Not Tell Her", which could quite easily be about the same relationship, a decade apart. In both cases, there's begging, denial, and anger, but in neither one does the singer tip over into Ax-Crazy. There's some heavy Sanity Slippage in "You Belong To Me", though.

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy